Taxes

Bush-Era Tax Cut Blunderbust!

Published by Papa Giorgio

Many do not realize how much of a hit Democrats took this past lame duck session. This cutting of the Bush Tax Cuts ~ so-called ~ was a main campaign promise from Obama:

NewsBusters points out, for instance, Rachel Maddow’s cheer-leading for the Democrats that they were finally going to implement a long standing promise… that is, defeating the Bush-era tax cuts. Here you see her on the eve of the big vote she was sure the Dems were geared up to win:

MADDOW (laughing): That, this evidence that you, that we have before us here in you, manifested in Bill Wolff, this phenomenon, being fired up like that, that is the key to the most important thing going on in American politics right now, I am convinced. This weekend Congress is going to be in session, this weekend! On a Saturday! We heard it as breaking news last night during this show, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announcing that he is not letting the Senate go home, the Democratic leadership is keeping the Senate in Washington over the weekend, because the thing that we have been talking about, the thing that they have been fighting about for months now is finally going to happen, tomorrow, on the weekend. Senate Democrats are finally going to do it. They are finally going to go through with this vote that they’ve been trying to psyche themselves up for on the Bush tax cuts.

Followed shortly after by Wolff donning a tall furry hat and marching off the set while thrusting a baton, as seen in embedded video, while Maddow said this —

MADDOW: This is not a matter of figuring out the policy! That is done. This is not a matter of doing the polling. That’s been done. This is not a matter of doing the math. The math has been done, the argument has been made, the numbers have been crunched, the debate has been worked through. It is a matter of whether or not the Democrats are psyched. It’s a matter of whether or not the Democrats have the fight in them to make this happen.

Hopefully we will see more of this in the next few years. That is, a compromising from the left for what is in the best interest of the country. Not to mention that I LOVE seeing Osama bin Olbermann pissed!

Willful Ignorance of History (Obama and JFK)

Published by Papa Giorgio

The American Spectator has a great post about Obama’s destructive behavior and the success of JFK and Reagan in cutting taxes on the rich and its affect on job growth (Red Planet h/t):

With 15 million workers unemployed and another 11 million underemployed, President Obama recently decided that the answer was to hit the road and throw some anti-rich red meat to some friendly stadium audiences.

At a Labor Day rally in Milwaukee, Mr. Obama declared that the United States “didn’t become the most prosperous country in the world by rewarding greed and recklessness.”

He didn’t say whether we became the most prosperous country via income redistribution and mandatory wealth spreading.

He also didn’t say whether the “greed” accusation applied to folks like Jay-Z and Lady Gaga or just to the regular capitalists and entrepreneurs who run America’s car repair shops and jewelry stores on Main Street.

He also didn’t say whether his definition of “recklessness” includes the nonstop and decentralized risk-taking that’s inherent in a free enterprise economy, a system rooted in what Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction.”

[….]

Mr. Obama also declared that “anyone who thinks we can move this economy forward with a few doing well at the top, hoping it’ll trickle down to working folks running faster and faster just to keep up — they just haven’t studied our history.”

In fact, the history of the 1960s and 1980s, under Democrat and Republican presidents, shows that the benefits of cuts in top marginal income tax rates clearly trickled down to help “working folks” in the form of more jobs, less unemployment, less poverty, less inflation, and higher wage growth.

The John F. Kennedy income tax cuts of 30 percent that were enacted in 1964, cutting the top marginal federal income tax rate from 91 percent to 70 percent, were followed by several years of 5 percent real GDP growth per year, dropping the unemployment rate from 5.2 percent in 1964 to 3.5 percent in 1969, a lower jobless rate than the 4.0 percent unemployment rate that’s generally defined as “full employment.”

Similarly, the Ronald Reagan income tax cuts produced real average annual GDP growth of 3.2 percent from 1981 to 1989, a higher growth rate than existed before and after the Reagan years — the 2.8 percent average real annual growth in the pre-Reagan years from 1974 to 1981, or the 2.1 percent growth in the post-Reagan years from 1989 to 1995.

Following the Reagan cut in the top marginal federal income tax rate from 70 percent to 28 percent, unemployment was cut in half, from 9.7 percent in 1982 to 5.3 percent in 1989.

And the impact on the poor? The real income, adjusted for inflation, of the poorest fifth of U.S. households increased 12 percent in the Reagan era, reversing a 17 percent decline in their average real income from 1979 to 1983 before Reagan’s pro-growth tax cuts kicked in.

The poverty population in the U.S., after growing by 7 million in the late 1970s, dropped by 4 million in the 1980s. The real median income, adjusted for inflation, of African-American households increased by 17 percent from 1982 to 1989, reversing a 10 percent decline from 1978 to 1982.

Obama’s strategy? Ignore the aforementioned history and raise taxes on “the rich” during a recession, for “fairness.” That’s a clear policy of economic and political “recklessness,” a strategy that will keep millions of people needlessly unemployed.

…(read more)…

 

Will the progressive lefts health care plan allow for choice or job growth?

Published by Papa Giorgio

In the above video we see Obama saying the following:

“IF you are already getting health insurance on your job, then, that doesn’t change. Health insurance reform passed was passed six months ago. I don’t know if anybody here has gotten a letter from their employer saying, ‘you have to go on government health care’….”

This statement is just false. I have posted in the past on this topic of companies dumping their plans because it will be cheaper for them just to dump their employees onto the government plan. Here is a recent example exemplified over at HotAir – 3M to dump retirees from medical coverage:

Remember when Barack Obama repeatedly promised that no one’s current coverage would have to change if Congress approved the health-care overhaul he demanded?  When the ObamaCare bill passed, the Associated Press suddenly discovered that the change of tax law that would supposedly generate billions of dollars to pay for the costs of the bill would also drive companies to dump retirees from their existing drug coverage and push them into Medicare.  Minnesota-based 3M became one of the first large corporations to do just that — and push retirees off of all their plans as well:

3M Co., citing new federal health laws, said Monday it won’t cover retirees with its corporate health-insurance plan starting in 2013.

Instead, the company will direct retirees to Medicare-backed insurance programs, and will provide reimbursement for that coverage. It’ll also reimburse retirees who are too young for Medicare; the company didn’t provide further details.

The company made the changes known in a memo to employees Friday; news of the move was reported in The Wall Street Journal and confirmed Monday by 3M spokeswoman Jackie Berry.

The ObamaCare bill created a fund to subsidize employers who didn’t dump their retirees, but the WSJ notes that it simply wasn’t enough to change the negative incentives created by the government interventions:

The changes won’t start to phase in until 2013. But they show how companies are beginning to respond to the new law, which should make it easier for people in their 50s and early-60s to find affordable policies on their own. While thousands of employers are tapping new funds from the law to keep retiree plans, 3M illustrates that others may not opt to retain such plans over the next few years. …

Democrats that crafted the legislation say they tried to incentivize companies to keep their retiree coverage intact, especially until 2014. The law creates a $5 billion fund for employers and unions to offset the cost of retiree health benefits. More than 2,000 entities, including many large public companies, have already been approved to submit claims for such reimbursement. 3M did not apply.

How did Democrats come up with the $5 billion figure for subsidies to protect retirees from losing their plans?  From the looks of it, they simply made it up.  They also didn’t do much calculation to determine whether the subsidies would actually incentivize employers into rejecting this strategy for cost savings.  To some extent, they may not have been able to make that calculation, because thanks to the massive amount of ambiguity in the bill, no one can really say for sure what the future costs would be.  And of course, that’s why 3M chose now to dump the retirees.

3m has 23,000 retirees, many of them likely to be living in Minnesota.  They’re also likely to vote in the upcoming midterms, perhaps even more likely now than ever.  That won’t be good news for House Democrats in the Minnesota delegation hoping to win a new term in four weeks.

We already know we will not know the ultimate costs… and going off of experience, we know all government programs are always more than what we are told:

This is a concern for the Dems and will be a losing issue (among the many others). Here are a couple examples of the impact this ridiculous bill has had on business:

Ed Schultz Showing His Ineptitude (98% Myth)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Ed Schultz continues the lie that the Bush tax-cuts only effect the top 2% of income earners. Let me tell you something. I have been diagnosed with MS, and my first bout with it was bad. Now, I like to say I’m 95% healthy and ready and raring to work. Yeah! Try and find a job right now. My wife has been blessed to just cover us. Ask her if the Bush tax cuts affect her or not…

I’d venture to say that most Americans who became parents in the last decade know Schultz’s claim is glaringly inaccurate for a specific reason — the child tax credit, which doubled to $1,000 per-child annually under the Bush tax cut of 2001. And helpfully indeed for those of us who aren’t wealthy, the child tax credit extended across all income brackets.

We are far from the top tier of income earners. NewsBusters continues:

“Unless Congress votes to extend the tax credit, the maximum amount will revert back to $500 for tax year 2011, and the number of families eligible for that amount will be much less as tougher eligibility standards that existed prior to EGTRRA (Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act) will go back into effect,” writes Eric Fox at Forbes.com.

As described by Erik Erickson yesterday at RedState, the Bush tax cut of 2001 was “George Bush’s version of Barack Obama’s stimulus plan” —

However, instead of creating a bunch of temporary government jobs and subsidizing the expansion of government, it cut tax rates, increased the child tax credit, increased the standard deduction for married couples, and increased contribution caps for a variety of savings programs. The result? The recession ended in November of 2001. (Source)

But, September 11, 2001, happened as the economy was recovering and throughout 2002, the economy grew at an anemic rate. The Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 revved up the 2001 tax cut package and cut taxes again on dividends and capital gains.

The result?

Under George W. Bush’s ‘tax cuts for the rich’ the rich paid more in taxes in 2005 than any time in the prior 20 years. In fact, as the Wall Street Journal noted, thanks to George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, the richest one percent went from paying 25 percent of all income taxes in 1990 to 39 percent in 2005. The richest 5 percent went from paying 44 percent of all income taxes in 1990 to paying 60 percent of all income taxes in 2005.

… More crucially, after the 2001 initial tax cuts, the annual growth rate went from 0.3 percent in 2001 to 2.5 percent in 2002. By 2004, GDP growth was the highest in 20 years. (Source)

Likewise, after the 2003 tax cuts, the unemployment rate fell to the lowest level since World War II. Let me repeat that: the Bush economic program created the lowest unemployment level ever. In fact, economists liken it to full employment given the demographic composition of those who were left on the unemployment line.

ReasonTV Critiques Hillary Clinton’s View on Taxes and Fairness

Published by Papa Giorgio

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently said that “the rich are not paying their fair share” of taxes in the United States and other developed countries.

Is she right? It depends on what you consider fair. Using 2006 data, The New York Times found that the richest 20 percent of households were paying 26 percent of their income to the federal government in the form of income, payroll, corporate, and excise taxes. The average for all familes? 21 percent.

And there’s this: “In 2006, the top quintile of households earned 55.7 percent of pretax income and paid 69.3 percent of federal taxes, while the top 1 percent of households earned 18.8 percent of income and paid 28.3 percent of taxes.”

Paying in a lot more than you get out? That doesn’t seem fair.

The rich are different than you and me; they’ve got more money. And they pay more taxes.

Politicians are different too–they rarely say what they really mean. Perhaps what Secretary Clinton means is that the rich can always pay more than they’re already paying.

That would explain why she and the president are lobbying to let the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year, a policy that would raise all sorts of taxes on all sorts of people.

Which doesn’t sound all that fair either.

See more at REASON!

MORE: